In July of 2011 “economist Laura D’Andrea Tyson calculated that even if job creation almost doubled, to the 208,000 jobs per month experienced throughout 2005, it would take until 2023 to close the gap opened by the recession. Job creation at the level observed during July of 2011, on the other hand, would ensure only an ever-smaller percentage of employed Americans over time.”

                        Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, ‘Race Against the Machine’

If I were to recommend reading for HR executives and hiring managers ‘Race Against the Machine’ would go to the top of the list. Not because it is the definitive work on the current structural issues with the US economy but because it is a quick, 95 pages, concise and clear bucket of cold water in the face of an otherwise oblivious population that is used to hearing from political leadership that the worst is over and things will soon be back to the way they used to be. Bottom line…things will never be the same, ever, ever, ever!

The signs of permanent structural economic change have been ...